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44556325The Creation Mandate: Our responsibility and our bridgehttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/10/29/the-creation-mandate-our-responsibility-and-our-bridge/
Mon, 29 Oct 2018 13:13:17 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=18660https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/10/29/the-creation-mandate-our-responsibility-and-our-bridge/#commentshttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/10/29/the-creation-mandate-our-responsibility-and-our-bridge/feed/2All well-intentioned people have the same objective: to build a good world that will sustain and support a thriving humanity. This shared goal gives Christians a great way to build bridges into all other communities which can lead to greater understanding. In today's polarized society, we must make the most of this opportunity. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/10/29/the-creation-mandate-our-responsibility-and-our-bridge/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Photo by Serhat Beyazkaya on Unsplash

For once, Christians and non-Christians can make common cause together for the good of everyone. In today’s polarized society, when we have such an opportunity, we must make the most of it to build bridges of understanding between our communities.

God has an exciting trajectory for humanity that leads from a world populated by two people with nothing of human design in it to a highly populated society designed and built by humans. Jews and Christians know this trajectory as the Creation Mandate, which was given to all humanity in Genesis 1:26-28. Everyone else is on the same trajectory but thinks of it as simply human progress. Either way, all well-intentioned people have the same objective: to build a good world that will sustain and support a thriving humanity. This shared goal gives Christians a great way to build bridges into all other communities.

However, it may be that some Christians are not making the most of this opportunity to reach out to our neighbours because the Creation Mandate is often sidelined in favour of the Great Commission. We could all benefit from a fresh review of the Creation Mandate and our response to it because the mandate is vitally important to God and his plan for both creation and humanity.

The Creation Mandate

I find it remarkable, but in line with God’s generous character, that he gave humanity the responsibility of co-creating the world that will support our growing population. In giving the Creation Mandate, God charged Adam and Eve (and through them, all humanity) to subduethe earth and to ruleover all living creatures.

Subdue

Since Genesis 1 is all about how God created order out of chaos, the best of the different meanings of subdue in this context is “to control for the purpose of establishing order.” Today, we call this creation care.

Genesis 2:15 helps us understand how to care for creation as God’s stewards in a way that pleases him: “Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it.” The crucial words are cultivate and keep. Here’s a good explanation of what God wanted Adam to do:

[Cultivate] can be translated as work, nurture, sustain, and husband; [keep] means to safeguard, preserve, care for, and protect. These are active verbs that convey God’s intention that human beings both develop and cherish the world in ways that meet human needs and bring glory and honor to him. . . . Human beings are, by divine intent and their very nature, world-makers.1

God expects us to bring order to the natural world and then cultivate and care for it so that it continues to provide sustenance and enjoyment to humanity. Without idolizing creation, we are to cherish it as the treasure it is.

Rule

The best of the available meanings of rule in the context of Genesis 1 is “to have charge of.” We have charge over all living things, and the way we rule must align with the way God rules. That means we must rule with the goal of ‘justice‘ because God created humanity in a condition of justice (shalom), where each person had his or her due share of God’s creation. And it means our rule must be characterized the same way as Psalm 145 characterizes God’s rule. He rules by wisdom, power, goodness, grace, compassion, faithfulness, generosity, provision, protection, justice, and love.

Our responsibility

Since the Creation Mandate was given before the fall and has never been rescinded, it continues to apply to everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. Theologian N. T. Wright is careful to distinguish between the Creation Mandate to build our world and God’s work of building his kingdom, and he makes it clear that fulfilling the Creation Mandate is not optional:

God builds God’s kingdom. But God ordered his world in such a way that his own work within that world takes place not least through the human beings who reflect his image. . . . He has enlisted us to act as his stewards in the project of creation. . . . Through the work of Jesus and the power of the Spirit, he equips humans to help. . . . The objection about us trying to build God’s kingdom by our own efforts, though it seems humble and pious, can actually be a way of hiding from responsibility, of keeping one’s head well down when the boss is looking for volunteers.2

Another theologian makes the same point about the obligation of fulfilling the Creation Mandate. Doing so as God’s representative “is the basic purpose for which God created humanity. We are responsible to God to manage and develop and care for creation.”3

The necessity of the Creation Mandate

Continuing to build our world helps it provide for our growing needs. As the population increased beyond Adam and Eve, there was a need to construct social institutions to help us relate to one another and coordinate our activities. We needed economic systems for trade and investment so we could diversify and specialize our work so some people produce what we need for survival and others work in science, medicine, or the arts. We could also pool resources to do projects that no single individual could do. As populations became denser, we developed technology to provide more bountiful food supplies and to distribute food and goods across longer distances. We built an educational system to support discovery of new knowledge and to pass it on to others. Today we still need to learn how to use the world’s resources wisely, particularly for energy, and create ways to sustain life on an increasingly densely populated planet.

These are all issues that Christians ought to care about and be involved in, so we should not withdraw from politics, banking, the arts, or any of the other things that evangelicals have tended to shy away from. Christians need to be active in all aspects of world-making to fight against the effects of sin (including our own) and keep all human-designed systems working for the good of all humanity.

What Creation Care looks like

Not properly stewarding God’s physical creation has dire consequences, according to the authors of Caring for Creation(Mitch Hescox and Paul Douglas). Theysay that disregarding God’s instructions to tend and care for the earth results in the earth’s failure to provide the necessities for sustaining life. While I haven’t done my own research, they cite research showing, for example, that there is a strong link between petrochemicals and fossil fuel energy and conditions such as asthma, autism, ADHD, and allergies. Breast cancer has risen from a lifetime risk of 5% to 12.5% since the 1960s, and research is increasingly showing that plastics and chemicals that act like hormones in our bodies are the likely culprits.4 Environmental stewardship is crucial to our future! As Christians, we should be at the forefront of environmental activism.

Caring for Creation is an excellent book for anyone wondering about how real the environmental issues are or anyone wanting to start caring more for God’s creation. The authors provide plenty of research, some theological reflection, and ideas for what individuals and churches can do.

Part of the role of the church in the past was – and could and should be again – to foster and sustain lives of beauty and aesthetic meaning at every level, from music making in the village pub to drama in the local primary school, from artists’ and photographers’ workshops to still-life painting classes, from symphony concerts . . . to driftwood sculptures. The church, because it is the family that believes in hope for new creation, should be the place in every town and village where new creativity bursts forth for the whole community, pointing to the hope that, like all beauty, always comes as a surprise.5

Beauty is not superfluous. It was important enough to God that he did not make a utilitarian world. He wasn’t concerned only with functionality. Because beauty is important to him, he demonstrated great creativity and artistry in creating a world that delights, amazes, and stimulates wonder. He gave us our senses to enjoy beauty. He gave us minds that can appreciate beauty. If beauty is important to God, it should be important to us too.

Creation care is about much more than environmental stewardship; it is about caring for the complete environment in which humans exist — social, intellectual, emotional, and so on.

What Justice looks like

Here’s one vision for what ruling with justice looks like:

Part of the task of the church must be to take up that sense of injustice, to bring it to speech, to help people articulate it and, when they are ready to do so, to turn it into prayer. And the task then continues with the church’s work with the whole local community, to foster programs for better housing, schools, and community facilities, to encourage new job opportunities, to campaign and cajole and work with local government and councils, and, in short, to foster hope at any and every level.6

Greg Paul’s book Resurrecting Religion: Finding Our Way Back to the Good News puts a human face to the suffering caused by injustices right here in Canada. The book is challenging because readers will come to realize that we can’t ignore our role, whether active or passive, in sustaining these injustices that are part of our own society. Paul writes:

Imagine if the church in this world, and the individuals who make it up, actually looked and acted like Jesus. Instead of spending most of our time and resources on a razzle-dazzle Sunday morning service, together we’d heal the sick, feed the hungry, embrace the unwelcome, set prisoners free, restore the dignity of people who have been humiliated, flip the tables of oppressive economics, offer forgiveness instead of seeking vengeance, sacrifice rather than protect ourselves, and much, much more. We’d vote for governments that promised to do those things . . . we’d be content with having enough, we’d share our excess with those who don’t have enough. We’d do all this as well as announcing the Good News of salvation for the individual soul — in fact, we’d do all this as a means of announcing it. Because that is what Jesus did.7

Ensuring all humanity experiences God’s justice (shalom) is the basic rationale for all compassion ministry.

We can’t go back

Because some people have romantic ideas about returning the world to what they consider is some earlier idyllic time when everything seemed to be just right, it must be noted that God’s trajectory does not include a return to the past. The trajectory is not a circle, but a line that takes human history in only one direction: from God’s creative work in the past to God’s ideal future for humanity.

And we should also watch out for another error: dualism. That happens when we think that a pure, pristine, 100% natural world is the goal. In that thinking, nature is good and human development (such as cities) is bad. But God’s ideal future for us includes nation states, economies, and political governance (see Revelation 21:24), and those structures will be the continuation of what we have built by fulfilling our responsibilities under the Creation Mandate.

This last point needs to be emphasized. The work we do today to create a better world has eternal consequences. Our work isn’t going to be undone by God at the end of time. Instead, God will perfect it! N. T. Wright has a great explanation of how what we do today will carry over into God’s ideal future:

The final coming together of heaven and earth is, of course, God’s supreme act of new creation. . . . He alone will make the “new heavens and new earth.”. . . But what we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. . . . You are accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God’s new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one’s fellow human beings and for that matter one’s fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God.8

Our goal is not to stay put at some comfortable place we find along the way, or to return to an earlier point, but to keep pressing on toward God’s ideal future.

Engaging with the Creation Mandate

As Christians, our knowledge of God and his ways will help us decide at each step along the trajectory what is good and what is not. These are matters that the church can and should address. Christians should be at the forefront of caring for and ruling over creation. While we certainly shouldn’t browbeat people with biblical verses to support this or that Christian view, we can use Scripture and theology to form a godly position and then because creation follows natural laws laid down by God, find good research to support our position and convince non-Christians of the goodness of it.

There are two reasons why Christians must engage in the Creation Mandate:

It is our responsibility: If we leave the responsibility for God’s creation to only those who do not know God, we would be irresponsible stewards. We have perspectives that might not otherwise be heard. Although non-Christians can manage reasonably well using human wisdom founded on natural revelation and their God-given capacity for reasoning, they won’t have the benefit of the knowledge of God and his ways as Christians do. And we should be working beside them anyway. It would be to our shame if the non-Christian world took better care of God’s world than we did.

It builds a bridge: Working on the Creation Mandate builds a bridge from the Christian community to all other communities because we both want the natural world to be in the very best condition for humanity to thrive. Doors may open for the Gospel message to be conveyed and accepted when we work together in common cause.

Download discussion guide

How churches can fulfill the Creation Mandate

The discussion guide attached to this post will help your church get started on identifying the role it could play in helping Christians fulfill the Creation Mandate. Here are some high-level ideas to prepare for that discussion:

Deliver a sermon series on the theme of justice throughout the Bible. A great resource for preaching about justice is Let Justice Roll Down by Bruce Birch. Alternatively, find a Bible study or write one for small group or personal study.

Teach the biblical principles that should guide how Christians should think about any of the issues in our society so they can do their own analysis and develop a position. How does God want us to think? What should our priorities and values be? What are the parameters of a good position?

Prepare your congregational members to be great stewards of the Creation Mandate by ensuring they have been transformed by Christ to rule with the characteristics of God’s rule as listed above. As N. T. Wright says, “If the gospel isn’t transforming you, how do you know that it will transform anyone else?”9

Key Thought: Christians must engage with the Creation Mandate as part of God’s plan for humanity.

“The books, Caring for Creation: The Evangelical Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment and Resurrecting Religion have been provided courtesy of Graf-Martin Communications, Inc. Available now at your favourite bookseller.”

]]>All well-intentioned people have the same objective: to build a good world that will sustain and support a thriving humanity. This shared goal gives Christians a great way to build bridges into all other communities which can lead to greater understand...All well-intentioned people have the same objective: to build a good world that will sustain and support a thriving humanity. This shared goal gives Christians a great way to build bridges into all other communities which can lead to greater understanding. In today's polarized society, we must make the most of this opportunity. MoreCCCC News & Blogs18:1218660Evaluation: Avoiding the blame gamehttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/19/evaluation-avoiding-the-blame-game/
Mon, 19 Mar 2018 13:30:23 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=27064https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/19/evaluation-avoiding-the-blame-game/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/19/evaluation-avoiding-the-blame-game/feed/0For your ministry to "step up its game," it must have an objective understanding how it is performing now. But is your organization ready to evaluate itself? <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/19/evaluation-avoiding-the-blame-game/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Used with permission.

If your ministry wants to “step up its game,” it absolutely must evaluate itself really well. The only way to achieve better performance is to have a clear-eyed, objective understanding of how you are performing now. Your staff members need to be in a frame of mind where they can take a hard look at what is getting results and what is not and see it as a positive thing to know which programs are performing well and should receive more investment, and which are under-performing and whose resources should be reallocated to something more promising. They should welcome corrective action as a good thing that will help them do even better.

But is your organization ready to evaluate itself?

Evaluation Anxiety

Does your organization and its culture support critical, objective self-evaluation? There actually is a phenomenon recognized in the social sciences as Extreme Evaluation Anxiety (XEA).1 At its worst, people suffering from XEA also suffer from depression and low self-esteem, and they withdraw from social interactions to avoid the possibility of people judging them negatively. That extreme form of anxiety may be rare in the workplace, but there are lots of people who have ordinary anxiety or negative attitudes towards evaluation. If there are enough of them on your staff, no evaluation is going to be helpful because they will work to undermine it. They don’t necessarily have a malicious intent, but they are stuck in their belief that they are performing well, and they naturally think the measurements and standards that support their self-perception are the ones the evaluation should use.

Bringing the topic closer to home for ministry leaders, the authors of Accountability and Effectiveness Evaluation in Nonprofit Organizations discuss the psychosocial problems associated with evaluation, saying that the basic issue is that people like to succeed, and if there is a failure, they prefer not to be seen as responsible for it. The authors call this phenomenon an LGAB attitude: Look Good, Avoid Blame! This can result in two problems:

Their fear of an unfavourable assessment causes them to try to bias the evaluation from the start, when the evaluation process is being designed

Their wish to avoid responsibility for failure causes them to start the blame game in earnest when actual results do not match expected results

The solution isn’t as simple as saying “Don’t worry about the evaluation.” Even though people are told the evaluation is intended simply to reveal problems that might exist and provide information to help resolve the problems, they will still believe that if there are problems, they will be blamed,

The challenge for evaluators is that an LGAB attitude turns the evaluation from an objective process into a political process, and then you might as well save your time and money and not do it.

Avoiding the “Blame Game”

So, how can you avoid the blame game and do the kind of evaluation that will help your ministry step up its game? You need to go deeper than just reassurances to the staff, which may or may not be believed. There are three basic strategies to create an environment which welcomes evaluation. They will take time to implement because staff need to see that what management says to them is, in fact, true in their own experience.

1. Create the right corporate culture

Corporate culture needs to embrace:

A commitment to the mission that is greater than a commitment to a program or any other means to an end. People who are passionately committed to the mission will be ready to change or grow for the sake of advancing the mission. So look for passion for your mission, when recruiting and for people already on the team. Do everything you can to build passion for your mission among the staff. Start with yourself. Be sure you have an inspiring passion for your mission and model it for the staff.

Seeing projects and programs as experiments. Assume they can always be improved upon by applying what you learn from experience. Everything should be as good as it can be, based on the circumstances at any particular time, but it should be celebrated as a good thing that we can learn from experience. It’s no failure to discover that improvements are possible. The staff should truly believe that “We did the best we could with the information and circumstances at the time.”

A willingness to identify and challenge sacred cows. Nothing except your Christian identity should be untouchable. Everything should be up for discussion. Remember, cows became sacred because at one time they were a key success factor. But that was then, and this is now. Whoever created the cow in the first place was probably an innovative person, and in this day with these circumstances, that person may very well be the first to overthrow the sacred cow they once created and create something new!

Re-thinking decisions that have been previously made. Like the sacred cow, decisions were made with the best available information at the time. With new information, a different decision might be warranted. Don’t stick with a bad decision just because time and money have been invested in it. The financial concept of sunk costs applies here. You’ve already spent time and money following through on that decision. There is no getting it back. But do you have to keep investing in it when you now know there is a better way? Don’t throw good money after bad! Make a fresh decision today and move on. If you can recoup anything, that’s good, but otherwise, what’s spent is spent. You should always search out a fresh perspective based on current circumstances when making decisions, making the very best decision today that will guide you to the most attractive future.

Inquiry and exploration. Reflection, curiosity, and what-if scenarios should be a regular part of organizational life. This will prevent staff from rigid thinking that there is only one way to get a result. If evaluation shows there is a better way, staff should be open to that rather than be defensive about the way they did it.

Rational, evidence-based decision making. Resistance to unfavourable evaluation results and resistance to change are often based on emotional, rather than rational, grounds. Train your staff to always look for evidence to support assertions.

In short, we need to identify our organizations aslearning organizations,and make every type of evaluation risk-free by treating each one, including individual performance reviews, as opportunities to learn.

Corporate culture must put the highest priority on every person and every program performing at their very best. Every opportunity for improvement should be cause for celebration, because no person or program is perfect, and every improvement helps us better fulfill our mission. The focus should be on how the positive outcome of an evaluation improves our results.

2. Involve staff

Once you have a supportive corporate culture, you can involve staff in designing the evaluation process without fear of political agendas. Staff can help you decide certain critical elements of the review, such as:

What will be reviewed and how. It is particularly important that outcomes rather than activities are evaluated.

What standards will be applied to the data to determine how good they are.

How the final results will be interpreted and used.

Analyzing the final results is a subjective task, so the criteria for how the results will be interpreted needs to be set before the evaluation is done. Human nature being what it is, if the benchmarks for deciding what is acceptable and what is not are determined after the results are known, the bar will be set so that employees achieve the result they want to see. So before the evaluation is done, answer these questions:

What distinguishes between satisfactory and unsatisfactory performance? What objective criteria will you examine?

After measuring the objective criteria, how good do the results have to be to be considered poor, good, or excellent?

What would it take for a program to be terminated rather than modified? How bad would the results have to be?

3. Support staff

Staff need to understand that evaluations benefit them too. They should know that the purpose of a program evaluation, or even their own personal performance evaluation, is to help the program or them be more successful. In other words, when you do evaluations, you are for them, not against them. The benefits for staff are:

Job security: When an organization performs well, jobs are more secure because donors will see the impact the charity is making and want to fund it.

Skill enhancement: Evaluations can lead to training for new skills, which enhances an employee’s capabilities and value to the employer.

Personal significance: When staff become more successful in their jobs, they have greater job satisfaction and a higher feeling of significance.

Greater enjoyment at work: Staff may have more interesting work, or new equipment or work processes that make doing the job easier or more effective. At the very least, they will know that the work they are doing is important work, because they know they are playing a part in achieving great results.

Download discussion guide

Conclusion

Evaluation is a critical part of being a good steward of your mission, the people, and the resources that God has given you responsibility for. It is worth the effort to ensure that the culture and the staff support objective evaluation of their work. God bless!

]]>For your ministry to "step up its game," it must have an objective understanding how it is performing now. But is your organization ready to evaluate itself? MoreFor your ministry to "step up its game," it must have an objective understanding how it is performing now. But is your organization ready to evaluate itself? MoreCCCC News & Blogs10:5327064Leaders! Stop moving and stand still for a bithttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/01/leaders-stop-moving-and-stand-still-for-a-bit/
Thu, 01 Mar 2018 14:55:33 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=16717https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/01/leaders-stop-moving-and-stand-still-for-a-bit/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/01/leaders-stop-moving-and-stand-still-for-a-bit/feed/0Christian leaders must see their ministry and its results through God’s eyes, not theirs. Time spent in listening prayer, reflection on your leadership and yourself as a leader, is what qualifies you to be a leader. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2018/03/01/leaders-stop-moving-and-stand-still-for-a-bit/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Used with permission.

All ministry leadership is first and foremost spiritual leadership. Sure there are lots of techniques and tools you can learn to use. There are leadership courses and degrees you can take. But at its root, as I’ve written before, ministry leadership is about leading a ministry that belongs to Jesus Christ, even if the ministry bears your name. Even if you are the founding pastor of a congregation. And because the ministry belongs to Christ and is pursuing his mission for the church, your leadership must be founded on nothing other than spiritual leadership if you want to achieve the results that Christ wants, rather than what you want. Every other leadership activity or technique flows out of that foundation.

Bias to action

We have to acknowledge, though, that boards hire leaders to get results, so we are typically hired for our expertise, capabilities, and proven performance. And naturally, we want to continually reassure the board that they have selected the right leader. So there is a very good reason why we leaders are drawn to a performance, action-oriented type of leadership. In fact, it is probably an innate bias to action that is just who we are that first causes others to see leadership potential in us. When we try to identify future leaders, don’t we often start by looking at practitioners, people who are really doing ‘it’ (‘it’ being getting results), and then giving them opportunities to develop as leaders?

But there is a downside to the bias toward action to watch out for:

Practitioners tend to be action oriented, which is why they’re practitioners and not academics. As a result, they may have little tolerance for engaging in reflection and analysis.
Getting to Maybe 1

The downside to a bias to action can be a lack of time invested in reflection and analysis when there is so much to be done!

Spiritual leadership

The most important part of reflection and analysis for Christian leaders is prayer and discernment, looking at your ministry and its results through God’s eyes rather than yours.

Time spent in listening prayer, reflection on your leadership and yourself as a leader, is not wasted time, or something to be done if you have time to squeeze it in. Prayerful discernment is the starting place for ministry leadership. It is what qualifies you to be a leader. You can’t lead for Christ if you are not in moment-by-moment communion with him.

Professionalized spirituality

The risk that every ministry leader must watch for and avoid is the risk of professionalizing your ministry. Dave Blundell, the author of Professionally Religious, tells pastors and executive directors to:

Stop giving so much attention and emotional energy to that which you lead and be still, wait, remain, see and reflect, and draw near. Everything you need will flow from that: peace, perspective, power, strength, fruit, results, unity, humility, purity, and joy. The counteragent of professional religion is spiritual vibrancy.2

If we professionalize our ministries, we will inevitably come to rely on ourselves, our skills, knowledge, and experience. We may end up thinking that our mission satisfies the spiritual element of our ministry, while we consider our leadership attributes as our own practical contribution to advancing Christ’s mission in the material world. But everything is spiritual, and while the practical leadership skills, knowledge, and experience we offer to Christ is indeed a contribution, it is not complete until Christ augments our gift with the Holy Spirit’s guidance and gifts. And that won’t happen if we think that we are bringing all that is needed through our own leadership.

As Steve McVey writes in The Secret of Grace:

Personal strength becomes a barrier in our gracewalk when we trust in what we think we can accomplish instead of trusting in God.3

Download personal reflection guide

Why stand still?

The benefit of standing still for a while and soaking in the perspectives that Christ can provide us through the Holy Spirit, is that we will open ourselves up to possibilities far beyond anything we could do in our own power. Our perception of what is possible and not possible is limited by what we can see ourselves doing. But God’s realm of possibility is vastly, infinitely, larger than our own. Remember what God said through Isaiah,

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Isaiah 55:8-9

“If my ways are not your ways, and if my thoughts are so much higher than yours that you can’t even conceive the depth and breadth of my thoughts, then the best your puny little plans can do is frustrate what I want to do through you. Stop planning and let me lead!”

Leaders must lead of course, and that requires leaders to be active, taking action to move people forward and accomplish real results. But they must lead by following Christ’s leadership. The bias toward action must be tempered to allow for time to be still and to rest in communion with Christ through his Spirit, to receive his inspiration and guidance.

If you feel you can accomplish the results you can conceive of on your own, then it may be that God will sit back and watch to see just what you really can do on your own. But if you receive and act upon the possibilities he presents, depending on God’s strength and abilities to see them realized, then you will be leading with the power of God.

]]>Christian leaders must see their ministry and its results through God’s eyes, not theirs. Time spent in listening prayer, reflection on your leadership and yourself as a leader, is what qualifies you to be a leader. MoreChristian leaders must see their ministry and its results through God’s eyes, not theirs. Time spent in listening prayer, reflection on your leadership and yourself as a leader, is what qualifies you to be a leader. MoreCCCC News & Blogs6:4116717Passion, Joy & Excellence in the Workplacehttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/11/passion-joy-excellence-in-the-workplace/
Mon, 11 Dec 2017 20:22:40 +0000/news_blogs/john/?p=12601https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/11/passion-joy-excellence-in-the-workplace/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/11/passion-joy-excellence-in-the-workplace/feed/0If it is that important for ministry leaders to be passionate about the ministry's mission, then it is also important for staff to be passionate too! So let’s discuss helping staff find passion in their ministry’s mission. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/11/passion-joy-excellence-in-the-workplace/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Used with permission.

I’ve written about the importance of leaders being passionate about their missions, and how they can develop passion if it starts to fade. Passion is important because passionate people find joy working in their areas of passion, and when doing so, they are highly motivated to achieve excellence in their work.

Well, if it is that important for ministry leaders to be passionate, then it is also important for staff to be passionate too! So let’s discuss helping staff find passion in their ministry’s mission.

Hire well

Recognize that when you hire people, they choose to work for you for their reasons, not yours. In some way, the job or role you offer helps them achieve what they want.

So if you want passionate people, it starts right at the beginning of the selection process. It is important that people want to work for your cause. In the best-case scenario, they are deeply attracted to your particular mission. It might be acceptable if they are attracted to the cause of Christ more generally and see your ministry as a way of fulfilling that aspiration. But depending on how demanding your ministry’s mission is (for example, requiring relocation to a difficult area) that more general attraction might not be enough.

One of the questions I ask job candidates is, “When there are so many ministries you can apply to, what is it about CCCC in particular that caused you to apply for this job?” There are some other questions that address the issue in a more roundabout way, but together they give me a good understanding of how we fit into their career plans. The nature of the work determines whether this question is a make or break question.

The goal in hiring is to match people to jobs that appeal to their passion, give them great joy, and that they can do with natural excellence.

Personalize roles

To have a wonderful workplace where everyone is enthusiastic and seriously engaged with their work, craft jobs to suit them. Jobs and their responsibilities need not be cast in stone. Various responsibilities and tasks can be shifted from one job to another based on the preferences and interests of the incumbents. At CCCC we have many times shifted something from one person to another with the agreement of the two people involved, at both management and administrative levels. I love to hear someone say how much they enjoy their work! What might be a chore to one could be a joy to another.

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Motivate to sustain passion

Never stop talking about the mission! It is what everything about the ministry revolves around. And once you have hired people to your mission, you need to hold their interest by talking about the mission all the time. Don’t just repeat the mission statement, talk about it from different angles. Here are some ways to do that:

Explain how the ministry’s mission supports the larger mission of the church and of God

Teach about various aspects of the mission, perhaps:

The psychological and sociological issues related to changing one’s worldview

The systemic conditions which your mission challenges, such as those which entrench poverty or make it difficult to get homeless people off the street.

Paint the big picture of the impact your ministry is having.

Tell stories of individuals whose lives have been improved by your ministry.

Celebrate to foster joy

Celebration can be a large, planned, formal event or it could be a spontaneous “high-five” as you encounter someone in the hallway who has just enjoyed a success. Celebrations should always be based on some specific achievement and the degree of celebration should be linked to the significance of the achievement. Otherwise, celebrations will be seen as manufactured celebrations and become meaningless.

Celebrations can either relate to the mission, or to an individual or group of individuals.

Mission-related celebrations recognize progress in mission fulfillment, whether it is an output or outcome, or it is acquisition of a new resource to help you achieve the mission, or recognition by others of the good work you are doing.

People-related celebrations recognize something significant that one of our workmates or a team of workmates, has accomplished. When one part of the body has a reason to celebrate, we all can support them by celebrating with them, strengthening the bonds between us. Their success encourages everyone because it means the ministry organization is better able to achieve its mission than it was before.

Train to cultivate excellence

It is a matter of good stewardship that leaders know their staff and volunteers just as a shepherd knows his sheep and calls them by name. The senior leader may not be able to know all the staff and volunteers well enough to be personally aware of their abilities and potential, but each staff member should be well-enough known by someone in leadership who will support their training and development to become everything that God intends them to be.

Leaders should never consider a staff member’s development complete at the time of hiring. During their time under your leadership, it is your responsibility to enable them to keep on developing themselves, growing in skill and capability so that they can be excellent in their work.

Cooperate with the Spirit

Finally, if you have passionate people working joyfully with excellence to fulfill your mission, don’t hinder what the Spirit is doing in them. Dave Blundell asks in his book Professionally Religious, “Do we, as leaders, trust the power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of followers?”1 Assume that the Holy Spirit is working in their lives just as he is in yours. Cooperate with the giftings and experiences that God has given each staff member.

Key Thought: Your mission can only be accomplished by people who are passionately engaged in it

]]>If it is that important for ministry leaders to be passionate about the ministry's mission, then it is also important for staff to be passionate too! So let’s discuss helping staff find passion in their ministry’s mission. MoreIf it is that important for ministry leaders to be passionate about the ministry's mission, then it is also important for staff to be passionate too! So let’s discuss helping staff find passion in their ministry’s mission. MoreCCCC News & Blogs6:2112601Spirit-led leaders and institutional lifehttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/06/spirit-led-leaders-and-institutional-life/
Wed, 06 Dec 2017 21:17:50 +0000/news_blogs/john/?p=13926https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/06/spirit-led-leaders-and-institutional-life/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/06/spirit-led-leaders-and-institutional-life/feed/0once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism. The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. So here are some thoughts to help you teach your community about the role of the Spirit and, consequently, to be more receptive to Spirit-led leadership. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/12/06/spirit-led-leaders-and-institutional-life/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

FreeImages.com/Razief Adlie

When a ministry looks for a leader, it wants a person who is Spirit-led so that the ministry will function under the direction of, and in the power of, the Holy Spirit. A Spirit-led leader has been trained to discern what God is saying to the church today. That leader will be receptive to the Spirit who “blows where he wills” (John 3:8) and therefore will necessarily be open to change and fresh ideas for ministry.

Yet once the Spirit-led leader is hired, that person is placed within an organizational structure, otherwise known as an institution, which has policies, procedures, and plans which are supposed to be helpful. In fact, institution means an organization founded to help people do something together (rather than separately) for a religious, educational, professional, or social purpose. All churches and specialized ministries are institutions.

Institutions and Institutionalism

Now, I have to acknowledge that the word institution has a bad rap. As soon as it is said, one thinks of a stodgy old organization that is set in its ways and resistant to change. But that is not the way an institution has to be. Stodginess, being settled in one’s ways, and resistance to change don’t define institutions, but institutionalism.

Institutionalism arises when maintaining the organization itself becomes the primary object for a group within the organization. For them, the idea of what the organization is becomes what the organization was at a moment that is now frozen in time, and then bad things happen:

Form takes precedence over substance

The servant becomes the master

The tail wags the dog

The organization that once served the mission has displaced that mission

Institutions and organizations are good things. As Carl Dudley wrote, “Organization puts ideas on wheels, translates faith into action, and enables our vision or ministry to become tangible reality.”1 There is no reason why an institution should necessarily inhibit charismatic ministry. And yet much conflict, particularly in local churches, occurs when Spirit-led ministry runs up against entrenched institutionalism. When the institution takes precedence over its mission, institutionalism has inhibited the charismatic work of the Holy Spirit.

The problem from a leadership perspective is that, once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism.The Spirit-led leader could find resistance coming from any or all of the board, the staff, or the donors. Any of these persons could be predisposed to revel in the fresh work of the Spirit today (charismatic ministry), or to trust in the time-tested ways of the ministry’s institutional life (institutionalism).

The solution

The solution is to recognize that people suffering from institutionalism have lost sight of how God works and what the purpose of the organization truly is. My own observation is that those people have displaced Christ at the centre of the ministry with their own personal preferences for the ministry. In other words, the ministry is now serving them as opposed to the mission. They may still be actively engaged in mission, may be significant donors and volunteers, but only in so far as how the mission is conducted suits their own preferences.

We all need to acknowledge that Christ and his mission for our ministry come first, and our personal preferences come much lower in priority. The welfare of the community within the organization ranks in-between.

The board and leadership need to help people understand this. Discipleship programs should include teaching about the place of individual preferences in the life of the church. When everyone keeps Christ at the centre, we will all get along. We’ll not be self-centred and will be much more charitable towards others. We will be more willing to follow the Holy Spirit wherever he leads us.

The Spirit’s leadership

The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. So here are some thoughts to help you teach your community about the role of the Spirit and, consequently, to be more receptive to Spirit-led leadership.

The Holy Spirit continues Jesus’ ministry

Luke says his gospel concerns only what Jesus “began to do and teach,”2 and yet his gospel and its sequel, Acts, show that Jesus’ time on earth came to an end shortly after the close of the gospel when he ascended into heaven. So how does Jesus continue to do and teach? Luke makes it clear that Jesus continues to work through the Holy Spirit.

The Spirit helps us adapt

According to the lexicons, the Hebrew and Greek words for the Holy Spirit mean “invisibility, movement, power, and life” and convey the idea of “God in action.” We live in an ever-changing world, so when we know that the creative and dynamic Spirit of God is actively guiding the church to meet new challenges, we should expect change and development to be the result. While the church’s mission does not change and the gospel of Jesus Christ does not change, how the church conducts its mission certainly can and does change.

The changes brought about by the Holy Spirit help the church address current conditions and are not changes that we humans can control. All we can do is acknowledge that the church and its various ministries belong to God and are his to do with as he pleases. The Holy Spirit therefore has primacy over the church, its methods and its structures, and we must accept his leadership.

The Spirit prevents decay

As often happens as organizations age, we get attached to the structure and the methods already in use and then, as it has been so eloquently said, the “encrustations of time . . . come to be valued as the most distinctive feature of the organization.”3 The organization fossilizes and declines.

We must keep our focus on God and remember that the church exists for a reason. It’s been well said that, “There is church because there is mission, not vice versa.”4 Mission comes before organization, therefore organizations (institutions) can be adapted to support the mission.

The Trinity and institutions

A Trinitarian view of the church helps us see the continuing work of Christ through the Spirit to accomplish the Father’s purposes, giving the church a dynamic quality that prevents fossilization.

Where the Spirit is at work, things happen. The people of God should be solidly grounded in the historical, incarnational ministry of Christ, but also open to the continuing, fresh, dynamic work of the Spirit.

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Surprise!

There will always be an element of surprise as we discern where the Spirit is and how he is leading us. We must be careful to not make the Spirit fit our preconceived notions of how things should be!

Spirit-led leaders and the institutions they lead will always be highly compatible when everyone is focused on Christ and his mission and sees the organization simply as a helpful means to fulfill Christ’s mission.

Key Thought: A Spirit-led ministry uses its institutional structure to accomplish its mission.

]]>once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism. The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church toda...once a Spirit-led leader is hired, the stage is set for conflict with the powerful force of institutionalism. The primary correction for institutionalism, a fixation on the past, is to focus on the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church today. So here are some thoughts to help you teach your community about the role of the Spirit and, consequently, to be more receptive to Spirit-led leadership. MoreCCCC News & Blogs8:2013926Great and Lasting Christian Leadershiphttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/27/great-and-lasting-christian-leadership/
Mon, 27 Nov 2017 21:33:25 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=26129https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/27/great-and-lasting-christian-leadership/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/27/great-and-lasting-christian-leadership/feed/0I have beliefs about you and it strikes me that these beliefs are also a great recipe for becoming a long-lasting successful ministry leader. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/27/great-and-lasting-christian-leadership/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Take time to reflect! Staff photo.

In a world full of freely available blogs and articles, why should you subscribe to this particular blog?

Because I care about you and your long term success as a Christian leader and have designed the blog to help you.

My prayer is that you will be an exemplary, powerfully effective ministry leader, following Christ’s leadership with the Holy Spirit working in you and around you!

What I believe about you

I have beliefs about you which determine what I write about. And it strikes me that these beliefs are also a great recipe for becoming a long-lasting successful ministry leader.

I believe:

You have been called by Jesus Christ to your ministry role. Because you have been called, fruitfulness will come as you pay attention to the One who called you. The paradox of Christian leadership is that even though you are in a position of authority, you are primarily a servant, stewarding the ministry that Christ placed in your hands. So you must be able to discern how Christ is leading you, and that’s why I write about the spirituality of Christian leadership. Making the spiritual practices of our faith a regular part of our personal and professional lives is essential to following Christ well and fulfilling our call to ministry service. My life was turned upside-down when I first really understood the simple spiritual practice of listening to God, rather than talking to him. Later on, a seminary course called Foundations of Christian Spirituality introduced me to many historic, but new-to-me, methods of spiritual discernment, which I quickly found to be indispensable.

I write the blog to help equip Christian leaders with the spirituality that drives Christian leadership.

Your primary responsibility is to reflect Jesus Christ in everything that you do in your role. This is about you as a person – how you think and your own personal behaviour – and how you as a leader affect other people. This responsibility is why I write about the personal aspects of Christian leadership, including personal integrity and self-discipline. Everyone has aspects of personality and conditioning that could work for or against them, and we must be ever watchful to ensure that everything about us reflects well on Jesus Christ. This is why I write about self-examination and the need for quiet reflection. The longer that people serve in leadership, the more tempting it is to think one has arrived and no longer needs to reflect so diligently on their leadership and personal performance. But one retired ministry leader told me that while in his forties, he wondered if there would ever come a day when he had such good self-mastery that he wouldn’t need constant, rigorous, self-examination. His mentor at the time was in his seventies, and he said he still needed to be diligent in his own self-assessment to control his potentially negative traits and attitudes. This really surprised the young leader, but thirty years later and in his seventies himself, he told me his experience is exactly the same as his mentor’s. Both these men had successful ministry careers and were honoured and respected in their retirement years, but even so, they both maintained a humble and honest attitude of “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

I especially want to help you finish your ministry career well, retiring with honour, and leaving a legacy of a call that flourished right to the end.

Those are just the basics. When Christian faith permeates an organization, it goes far deeper. For example, faith affects program design and theory of change models because it is a filter you use when identifying root causes and your underlying assumptions. Faith also affects the strategy you develop because it is the criteria you use to rank priorities and assess opportunities. It affects how you ask for funds: are you competing against other ministries for scarce resources, or are you aligning donor’s God-given passions with your mission? How a supplier treats their employees may affect whether or not you want to do business with them. I write about strategy, organizational leadership, and team leadership to help you express your faith in all aspects of your leadership role.

I believe God’s abundant blessing is most likely to come to ministries that are faithful to his ways in every aspect of their operation.

Although you lead a particular ministry, you have a wider leadership responsibility. If you lead a ministry, you are part of a community of Christian ministry leaders and must take the wider community into account when planning for your ministry. Think bigger! Your vision should go well beyond organizational boundaries and encompass the entire community. How might your ministry contribute towards its welfare and its mission? Where does collaboration fit in your strategic plan? In today’s culture, the Christian church is very much on the margins of society, and it is all the more important that we think and act collectively if we want to have an impact beyond our church walls. And so I write about community-wide issues that every ministry leader should address.

I urgently want you to play your part in the wider community of Christian ministries.

Download personal reflection guide

This is why I write this blog. Another post will help you use this blog most effectively.

Key Thought: I write this blog to help you be a great, long-lasting ministry leader.

]]>I have beliefs about you and it strikes me that these beliefs are also a great recipe for becoming a long-lasting successful ministry leader. MoreI have beliefs about you and it strikes me that these beliefs are also a great recipe for becoming a long-lasting successful ministry leader. MoreCCCC News & Blogs7:1026129The Value of Communal Discernmenthttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/20/the-value-of-communal-discernment/
Mon, 20 Nov 2017 14:38:37 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=25586https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/20/the-value-of-communal-discernment/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/20/the-value-of-communal-discernment/feed/0Great leaders are not infallible or omniscient. They simply recognize good ideas and know how to bring a group together to make something of them. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/20/the-value-of-communal-discernment/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

“Canoe” by Brian Scott. As art, this works well. But it can also represent all those radical new ideas leaders have. Are they brilliant and groundbreaking, or non-starter duds? Communal discernment can shed some light. Personal Photo.

Authors as artists

I was introduced to C.S. Lewis and his wonderfully captivating world of Narnia in third grade, when my teacher brought a radio to class so that we could listen to a reading of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Later, at university, I was introduced to another wonderful world – Middle Earth – first through The Hobbit, and then through the majestic sweeping saga of The Lord of the Rings, bothby J.R.R. Tolkien,

People tend to assume that great authors such as Lewis and Tolkien are incredibly gifted individuals who, working all on their own with innate gifts of imagination and composition, single-handedly develop their plots and characters to tell a compelling story.

But that wouldn’t be true.

Both Lewis and Tolkien worked in community to develop their stories.

They were part of a group closely associated with Magdalen College at Oxford University,1 the Inklings. This group met in Lewis’s rooms at the college from 1933-1949 to read their developing stories to each other for critique and suggestions. The picture below shows where C.S. Lewis lived at the time – on the middle floor just to the right of the centre section, where the two white blinds are seen.

C.S. Lewis’s rooms are on the 2nd floor with the two white window shades drawn. Personal photo.

The best known place where the Inklings met weekly for friendship and lunch, as opposed to readings, was at a pub called The Eagle and Child.

The pub where the Inklings met. Personal photo.

They sat at the table shown on the left in the picture below.

The table where JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis sat with the rest of the Inklings. Personal photo.

Leaders as artists

Leaders, like authors, are often thought to work alone, but instead of crafting stories, they craft strategy and solve organizational issues. This leadership model, developed in the early 1800s, is called the “Great Man Theory,” and it certainly can appeal to a leader’s ego! After all, who doesn’t want to be great? The theory is that an organization’s or a nation’s success can be attributed to a single heroic person, who in olden days was always a man. This theory has since been discredited, but it still lingers on, particularly in the world of organizational leadership where successful leaders are lionized as individual heroes.

Now, there certainly are great leaders, but if they believe that they represent the Great Man Theory in action and that the organization’s success is truly all bound up in them, then they are ripe for a brutal reality check. The truth is, great leaders work with teams. They are not infallible nor are they omniscient. Some leaders are far more creative than others, but they don’t have to be. A leader is simply a person who recognizes opportunity, no matter which person is creative enough to spot it, and knows how to bring a group together to make something of it.

For an example of what could go wrong with leaders who believe otherwise, just read my post on the leadership failure that sent a short-term mission team to jail. In this case, the leaders thought they knew everything they needed to know, but it turned out there were a lot of crucial things they knew nothing about.

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Drawing on the community

Here are some tips to help you discern your plans in community rather than alone on your own:

Every leader needs to be receptive to influence and critique from outside their sphere of influence. Pick people who you know have alternative perspectives to your own to consult with. This way, you will generate a much more robust and informed understanding of the topic at hand.

The stronger your personality and sense of inerrant judgment, the stronger and more forthright your outside influence needs to be.You need to have people who will challenge you and push back on your ideas when they can think of something they believe is better.

Look for confirming and disconfirming feedback. If you have a genuinely good idea, you will find confirmation in consulting with others. If your idea has flaws or isn’t the best, you will get disconfirmation. Be sure to pay attention to disconfirming information. In a country like Canada where we generally try to be so polite to one another, it’s a gift when someone is willing to say anything knowing that it is a challenge to the way you see things.

The college’s name is pronounced “Maudlyn.” Here’s the official story why it is pronounced that way (see the last paragraph). ↩

]]>Great leaders are not infallible or omniscient. They simply recognize good ideas and know how to bring a group together to make something of them. MoreGreat leaders are not infallible or omniscient. They simply recognize good ideas and know how to bring a group together to make something of them. MoreCCCC News & Blogs5:0725586Are we worthy of their sacrifice?https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/06/are-we-worthy-of-their-sacrifice/
Mon, 06 Nov 2017 14:42:27 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=22634https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/06/are-we-worthy-of-their-sacrifice/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/06/are-we-worthy-of-their-sacrifice/feed/0"In Flanders Fields" is about passing on the torch. Ministry leaders, are we carrying the torch in a way worthy of our ministry's founders and their sacrifice? <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/11/06/are-we-worthy-of-their-sacrifice/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

My great-uncle George Pellowe was killed from a direct hit by a shell in WWI. This is his only memorial.

In Flanders’ Fields

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Last verse of “In Flanders’ Fields” by Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae

John McCrae wrote this famous poem just after losing a close friend at the Second Battle of Ypres in the spring of 1915. While mourning his loss, he realized his friend’s death would not be in vain if others carried on the cause and defeated the aggressors.

In Christ’s Cause

The same idea of carrying on the cause applies to Christians, especially we who lead Christian ministries. Are we still carrying the torch, holding it high, for all those who have gone before us? Do we share their focus on our mission and their passion for our cause? Or have we professionalized ministry and now see it as just a program to be maintained?

We need the same passion and vision which led people to found the churches and ministries we now lead. A Christian version of McCrae’s poem might end like this:

Take up our cause for Christ and know
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
Do not break faith with us who die!
Hold fast, work hard. Though trials grow,
God reigns above and here below.

As you read through the rest of this Remembrance Day post, keep the question “Are we worthy of their sacrifice?” in mind from a ministry perspective. Are you worthy of the sacrifices made by those who preceded you in your church or ministry? Reflecting on the question is one way to prevent mission drift.

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General Sir Arthur Currie

One hundred years ago, Canada was forging its nationhood through its contribution to the war that was supposed to “end all wars.” Almost 61,000 Canadians gave their lives and another 172,000 were wounded in a war which they believed would lead to a better world of peace, justice, and good will.

The question we must ask today is the same question that General Sir Arthur Currie asked only fifteen years after the Great War’s end, “Where, ask the men who fought, is that new world of justice and good will they suffered so keenly to create?” Today we must ask ourselves, “Have we done all that we can to be worthy of their sacrifice?”

I do a one man performance of the Leadership Lessons From Vimy Ridge portraying General Sir Arthur Currie, who was the commander of the Canadian Corps. Under Currie, Canada never failed in a single assignment and never lost an inch of ground, In the last 100 days of the war, Canada’s four divisions defeated sixty-four enemy divisions.

John as General Sir Arthur Currie

Today, I’d like to present an excerpt from a speech Currie wrote for Remembrance Day 1933, which was called Armistice Day back then. His words are every bit as relevant today as they were 83 years ago! Here is what General Sir Arthur Currie had to say. You can either watch the video or read the text. Please agree with me in my prayer that concludes the text.

“Are we worthy of their sacrifice?”

We remember tonight, and it is well that our country should remember, the high resolves of that time fifteen years ago. There was unspeakable sorrow for the great army of youth that had gone so early to its death. We were told that the world would henceforth be safe for youth. But what of youth today, and the opportunity for youth in our modern world? Where, ask the men who fought, is that new world of justice and good will they suffered so keenly to create? Has the world, has our country, in the fifteen years since the Armistice, kept its promised faith with the unreturning dead? Has the great sacrifice really turned to glory, the glory of a better time? Has the world done anything more in these fifteen years than give lip-service to the ideals for which our fallen comrades gave their lives? The answer to these questions is found in the actual conditions of the hour. And these conditions are such that Armistice Day should smite the conscience of the world.

Bitterness and hate, selfishness and greed, are still entrenched in our social and economic and political life. Our world is a world of suffering, of uncertainty, of demon doubts and fears. Our world is not yet done with the necessity for heroism and sacrifice. We need, as never before, the healing qualities of devotion and fidelity and self-sacrifice and goodwill and comradeship and friendliness, so that suspicion may be vanquished and justice and mutual trust may be permanently enthroned. All this desire is in harmony with the real spirit of Armistice Day – the day dedicated to sacrifice and loyal remembrance of others.

I am not a pessimist when I think of the future. We have faith that these moments of discouragement are fleeting, and perhaps misleading; that those whose memories we especially cherish did not make their sacrifices in vain, and that in the end the stern determination of millions of men and women, who are minted with no spirit of unworthy pacifism, will prevail over those whose views would tend to perpetuate the horrors of war, even though some of these latter may be seated in the high places of national executive and legislative power.

Armistice Day is primarily a commemoration of the dead. But a commemoration of the dead should be likewise an appeal to the living not to deplore the past, but to awaken our sense of responsibility to make our world less deplorable. The disappointment – even the bitterness – of many who came back may be traced to the monstrous paradox that only because of the nobility of individual sacrifice does war in any way ennoble civilization.

We know from experience the stupidity of war, and the stupidity of those who made or caused wars. Does our responsibility end with condemning the follies of the stupid or the vicious twenty years ago? Are we doing all we can to prevent a catastrophe which we will later deplore? Are we fighting to the last, as we fought fifteen years ago, for the vitality and the continuity of civilized standards in public and private affairs, in national and international life? Are we fighting so that the next generation of youth will not condemn our stupidity as we condemned in the trenches the stupidity of our elders in 1914 and the era immediately before it? On those nights and days of suffering and death, when we saw our comrades fall in the fire of savages fed by the so-called gods of civilization, we endured and ‘carried on,’ in the firm hope that out of the embers and the broken human dust would rise a new order, in which war and greed and injustice would have no place. That hope will yet be realized, despite discouragements, even in a world which has to make its way out of sickness and despair, if we but keep our shield and our faith, and if we insist on leadership in all affairs that is not leadership for apathy.

We are to blame if we allow others, interested only in greed, to take the reins from our hands and drive us into another abyss.

The truest commemoration of our honoured dead will be in the vigorous enlistment of our own lives and capacities in the struggle between unselfishness and greed, honesty and corruption, justice and injustice, and in the serious application to our national problems of those qualities which distinguished our Corps in the war days, and enabled us always to advance and conquer.

Armistice Day reminds our country of the steadfastness of our fighting troops. It should also be a reminder to every citizen that he still has a duty to discharge, if the war is to be fully won and its high objectives permanently secured. It should call us to a realization that we still have to complete the unfinished task of our dead comrades who speak to us tonight with a voiceless eloquence – the task of replacing the present system of suspicion and fear and conflict with the enduring fabric of confidence in humane law and order.

And so, in conclusion, we drop the rose of remembrance on the supreme devotion of our sacred dead. We linger, like our country, in our tribute of reverent memory of our glorious youth who gave their lives to defend our liberty: “Sleep well, heroic souls.” And on this Armistice night, as we recall the nobility of your sacrifice, we turn away from trenches and wounds and death and we re-dedicate our lives with hope to the still unfinished work which you so gallantly advanced and for which you died.

My Prayer

Lord God, this world is as badly in need of peace and good will as it was one hundred years ago. We acknowledge that as much as we can work for your justice in this world, ultimately it is you alone who can bring peace and good will to this world through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. May the promise of the heavenly multitude who sang to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth be fully realized: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

]]>"In Flanders Fields" is about passing on the torch. Ministry leaders, are we carrying the torch in a way worthy of our ministry's founders and their sacrifice? More"In Flanders Fields" is about passing on the torch. Ministry leaders, are we carrying the torch in a way worthy of our ministry's founders and their sacrifice? MoreCCCC News & Blogs11:0922634Reformation: When others want you to reformhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/10/30/reformation-when-others-want-you-to-reform/
Mon, 30 Oct 2017 13:42:03 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=26269https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/10/30/reformation-when-others-want-you-to-reform/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/10/30/reformation-when-others-want-you-to-reform/feed/0The Evangelical church has had a run of several hundred years, and who's to say we ourselves are not in need of reform? Given that October 31, 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of Luther's reform movement, let's see what the Evangelical church can learn from the Catholic church's response to Luther. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/10/30/reformation-when-others-want-you-to-reform/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

The wooden doors Luther nailed his theses to have been replaced by these bronze doors with the “95 Theses” cast into them. Personal photo.

Many reforms have been good for us and looking back on them we applaud people such as Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, and Nellie McClung for their persistence in bringing about reform.

But what about those who opposed their reforms?

What is it like to be on the resistant side of reform?

More pointedly, what if we are the ones people want to reform?

An Evangelical Reformation?

Five hundred years ago on October 31, 1517, Martin Luther launched a critique of the Catholic church. Might there be any other “Martin Luthers” making a similar critique of the Evangelical church today?

Any organization or movement inevitably calcifies from the “encrustations of time”1 and periodically needs reform that reinvigorates it, calls it back to its roots, and helps it focus on the right things. Calls for reform can expose our blind spots, mission drift, and untested assumptions. The Evangelical church has had a run of several hundred years, and who’s to say we ourselves are not in need of reform? A healthy church needs to be open to that possibility if it wants to stay healthy.

Calls for reform should be examined, tested and, if valid, accepted. But even if not accepted as a whole, there could still be a part of the call to reform that points to opportunities for improvement. We shouldn’t dismiss our critics too quickly, because God could be using them to speak prophetically to us!

For example, calls for theological reform are perhaps the most difficult of all to handle well. We might just dismiss them out of hand, but then we would miss an opportunity to look for ways we could become a better church. For example, a call to reform our theology of gender identity could be rejected but still lead to an examination of:

how well we understand issues of gender identity and the experience of people who question their identity or who have identified with a non-traditional gender identity,

how we serve people who see things differently than we do but who still need God’s love and forgiveness just like us, and

how we engage in dialogue with people who oppose our convictions.

Every call for reform gives us an opportunity to learn and become a better church.

The Reformation

Let’s take advantage of the 500th anniversary of the start of Luther’s reform movement to see what the Evangelical church can learn from how the Catholic church responded to Luther’s 95 Theses.

Martin Luther’s Reform

Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of All Saints’ Church (also known as the ‘Castle Church’) in Wittenberg, Germany.2

All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg Germany. The door Luther nailed his theses to was the side door, pictured here and above. Personal photo.

Nailing the theses to the door was not an act of defiance or protest, but was the accepted way that university professors announced topics they would like to debate. Martin Luther was a theology professor at the University of Wittenberg and he was not instigating a public uprising against the Catholic church, but a discussion about its problem practices.

This is Luther’s living room and the famous table around which guests gathered to listen to and discuss Luther’s theological expositions.

At this early stage of the Reformation, Luther’s goal was to reform the corrupt and abusive practices of the Catholic church at the time. He didn’t want to break with Rome. Had the Catholic church corrected the abuses and ended the corruption promptly, it is quite possible that Luther would have remained a Catholic. It was only over time that the break became inevitable.

Recently I took a course on the Reformation which was taught by a very scholarly and influential Benedictine monk. Surprisingly, he agreed with most of Luther’s theses! In his words, “The church really did need reform!”

The Catholic church’s response

So how did the Catholic church respond? Well,

Luther sent his theses to the church hierarchy on October 31, 1517

The Catholic church condemned his writings in 1518, declared him a heretic in 1520, and excommunicated him in 1521

The church still had to deal with the growing dissent. After receiving the 95 Theses in 1517, the church took 28 years to create a process to respond to Luther’s objections and try to prevent a permanent breach. In 1545, it convened the Council of Trent for this task

It took the Council 18 years to formulate its conclusions, closing in 1563

The turnaround time for the church’s response was an amazing 46 years!

Luther died in 1546, just a year after the Council convened. The church’s delay meant that, even if he had been willing to participate in the Council, Luther died before it got to meaningful debate.

Luther’s grave. He is buried beneath the floor. Personal photo.

Lessons for Evangelicals

Engage early

During the 28 years of apparent inactivity on the Catholic side, the Protestants were very active, developing their own theology and then dividing into multiple camps as they argued over various theological matters. By the time the Council convened, there was no single Protestant leader or group to dialogue with, and a Protestant ecclesiology had solidified which did not include the papacy. The situation had become way more complicated than at the beginning. As the saying goes, it was too late to shut the barn door because “the horse” was long gone!

Some issues aren’t all that significant and will disappear on their own. But a call to reform on a significant issue is likely to gain traction and be sustained over time because the reformers are heavily invested in bringing about change. Either the pressure will continue to mount for you to reform, or they will take matters into their own hands and move ahead on their own. The world will not stop and wait for you to plan your response.

Be aware of history

The Catholic church invited some leading Protestants to attend the Council and discuss their differences, even giving them an offer of ‘safe conduct.’ Very few came though, and then only for a short time, because just a century before, in 1415, Jan Hus had also protested the very same things that Luther was protesting, and even though he had been given ‘safe conduct’ to attend the Council of Constance to discuss his views, once at the Council he was tried and condemned, was scalped, and then burned at the stake! It’s no wonder that a ‘safe conduct’ didn’t mean much to the Protestants!

We may have some history to apologize for. Be humble and get the dialogue off to a good start by acknowledging past actions that have made the situation worse today. It may take a while to build enough trust with the reformers to have a meaningful conversation with them.

Set aside fears

Part of the reason for the Catholics’ long delay in responding to the Protestants was that a response would require a church council, and popes had feared calling a council ever since the Council of Constance. In addition to condemning Hus, that was the council that decided church councils are superior to the Pope and could declare a pope to be heretical. Although this decision was overturned at the Council of Florence, popes were disinclined to call a council for fear it would get out of hand.

Don’t let fear prevent engagement. Have faith that God is involved in your affairs and will support you through challenging times.

Be humble

As I reported in an earlier post, when the Council of Trent discussed another of Luther’s theses (disagreement over the sacraments), a cardinal proposed that the communion cup be given to the laity as well as to the clergy, and it was acknowledged there really wasn’t a good argument against doing so. This change would have satisfied the Protestants, who felt lay people should receive both the bread and the wine. But the Council shot down the proposal only because it would mean admitting that the church had made a mistake in the past!3

If we’ve made a mistake, admit it and do the right thing. Our goal isn’t to save face, it is to be faithful. Pride will stop honest dialogue and self-examination in their tracks. The only way forward requires humility.

Explore and inquire

John O’Malley, author of Trent: What Happened at the Council, wrote that “Each side could not help playing according to its own rules and therefore making demands on the other that required it to surrender or severely compromise its identity.” This pretty much guaranteed there would be no reconciliation.

Engage in a spirit of inquiry with the goal of exploring and discovering what is right together. If agreement isn’t possible, you can always end in disagreement if necessary and still have made some progress or improvement. But you won’t get even that far if you create barriers to engagement.

Be intellectually honest

O’Malley also noted that the Catholic theologians suffered from two systemic weaknesses:

The first was a penchant for proof-texting, lifting statements, and even ideas of the Protestant Reformers, out of context, the result of an undeveloped skill in textual analysis.

The second weakness was an underdeveloped sense of historical criticism, which resulted in the Council affirming apostolic origins for beliefs and practices where there were none, or where those origins were much less secure than the council intimated.

Engage with intellectual honesty. Be sure to understand the other’s position completely, and to acknowledge weaknesses in your own position. For example, not every practice needs to be seen in the New Testament church to be valid. As I discussed in my book, The Church at Work, if that were the case there would be no room for the Holy Spirit to do anything new or for us to adapt to new circumstances that the early church didn’t have to deal with.

Download personal reflection guide

So, …

Calls for reform in the church should be taken as an opportunity for self-evaluation with the goal of becoming the best church possible. We don’t need to agree with everything others believe in order to learn something from them.

For example, here’s an article by a reporter for the United Church of Canada Observer magazine explaining what the United Church can learn from Evangelicals.

What could conservative Protestants learn from liberal Protestants? Perhaps they could help us think through how to do a better job speaking out on social justice issues. We do great with compassionate ministry, but tend to be uncomfortable with issues of systemic injustice.

The real equivalent to Martin Luther’s reform movement would be those within the Evangelical church who are now drawing apart from it as they critique their Evangelical beliefs and practices. One such group is the highly controversial “emerging church.” I am no expert on this brand of Christianity, but generally they call for a more inclusive Christianity, one that is more focused on service than doctrine, and one that emphasizes love and grace over truth and sin. Even if we disagree or have concerns with aspects of their theology, could we learn from them about being present with those outside our faith and engaging them where they are at?

A vision for the Evangelical church

A great vision for the Evangelical church is that it remain faithful to Christ and be both self-aware and self-correcting so that it is exemplary, healthy, and effective in mission. It would be open to critique from any source and use it to become a better church.

Since there is no centralized structure to the Evangelical church, it is up to ministry leaders to show community leadership and dialogue with other Evangelical leaders with whom they are in relationship.

Key Thought: Critics show us where there is room for improvement.

A Mighty Fortress is Our God

Here’s a bonus for you. Martin Luther wrote and composed many hymns, but the most famous of them all is A Mighty Fortress is Our God (“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” in German). It captures Luther’s spirituality so well that the church in Wittenberg has it inscribed on its tower!

The tower of All Saints’ Church with “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott” inscribed on it. Personal photo.

I recorded a 2 minute fughette based on the very memorable opening line, which you can listen to in the video below. Enjoy!

I love this phrase! It was formulated by R.W. Southern in a 1970 book – Western society and the Church in the Middle Ages. ↩

Historians question whether this famous event ever happened, so nailing the theses to the church door might be a legend. But it is an undoubted fact that on October 31, 1517 Luther mailed a letter to the Archbishop of Mainz raising the issue of indulgences with the 95 Theses included as an attachment. ↩

This was a point made by the monk who taught the Reformation course. ↩

]]>The Evangelical church has had a run of several hundred years, and who's to say we ourselves are not in need of reform? Given that October 31, 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of Luther's reform movement,The Evangelical church has had a run of several hundred years, and who's to say we ourselves are not in need of reform? Given that October 31, 2017 is the 500th anniversary of the beginning of Luther's reform movement, let's see what the Evangelical church can learn from the Catholic church's response to Luther. MoreCCCC News & Blogs13:1826269The Shepherd’s Voicehttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/09/29/the-shepherds-voice/
Fri, 29 Sep 2017 09:30:37 +0000https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/?p=24557https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/09/29/the-shepherds-voice/#respondhttps://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/09/29/the-shepherds-voice/feed/0However far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. <a href="https://www.cccc.org/news_blogs/john/2017/09/29/the-shepherds-voice/" class="linkbutton">More</a>

Used with permission.

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the fold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, he is a thief and a robber.But he who enters by the door is a shepherd of the sheep.To him the doorkeeper opens, and the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.John 10:1-4 (NASB)

Christ’s call to ministry

I love hearing ministry leaders tell their stories about how Christ called them into vocational ministry.

Every story is unique. No two are alike.

Every story is very personal.

And no one ever forgets their call story.

They treasure it!

Christ the Great Shepherd

The initial call to ministry

When Jesus Christ enters the sheep pen, he knows all his sheep individually. He even knows them by name. And they know his voice. You’ve probably had the same experience I’ve had. You hear someone talking but can’t see them, and yet by their voice you know exactly who they are. As I read these verses, I can’t help but imagine that when the shepherd speaks, the sheep’s’ ears perk up, they turn their heads toward the voice, and they listen intently. And when the shepherd calls them out of the pen, they follow.

As Christian ministry leaders, Jesus called each one of us from the pen to go out through the gate and enter into vocational ministry.

Many of us were probably quite attentive to his voice at that time because many transitions come when we are in crisis or upset, and are looking for direction:

It may be that we are unsettled in what we are currently doing, restless and needing a change.

Perhaps we’re finishing up a seminary degree and anxious to find a place to serve.

Maybe our world has turned upside-down and we are in crisis. Everything is changing and we need to find a way forward.

Or it could just be an opportunity comes your way, and you wonder what to do about it.

In all these scenarios, we end up searching for what God wants of us. And thus we are particularly attentive to his voice at the time when we first come into ministry leadership. And we probably stay attentive for at least a while, earnestly seeking to discern what God wants us to do.

The continuing call while in ministry

But as we mature in our leadership roles, we may find ourselves growing in confidence of our own abilities, and we may lose the sense of dependence on God, and gradually his voice grows dim as we focus on doing our very best for God based on our own self-reliance.

Yet once the sheep have left the pen following behind the shepherd, the shepherd doesn’t stop talking with his sheep. The shepherd walks ahead of them, still talking with them, and they continue to follow wherever the shepherd leads.

However far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. We must continue to listen to his voice just as intently, just as closely, as we did when he first called us to ministry, because he knows the good works that he has in store for us to do, and he doesn’t leave us to guess what they are. If you continue to listen to our Great Shepherd’s voice just as earnestly as you did at the beginning of your ministry, you will be led to all that he has in store for you. And having heard Christ’s continuing call, respond to it just as eagerly as you did his initial call.

Download personal reflection guide

Blessing

Now [may] the God of peace,… the great Shepherd of the sheep … Jesus our Lord,equip you in every good thing to do His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13:20

Key Thought: The Good Shepherd’s call to ministry becomes his guidance in ministry.

]]>However far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. MoreHowever far you have come in ministry since your initial call, Jesus is still going ahead of you and keeps calling you to follow him. MoreCCCC News & Blogs4:4524557